She knew it had been a reckless decision.
Or, perhaps reckless was putting it a bit mildly. Doors, she had learned, especially ones that appeared in highly unlikely places, could lead anywhere. For instance, getting stuck in Kingdoms Hearts itself wouldn't have helped her, Riku, or Sora, in the slightest would it? Not that it had been likely to lead to Kingdom Hearts, but at the moment Atlantica or the innards of Monstro would have seemed equally as perilous.
On the other hand, she felt she probably would have gone completely insane had she just left that door there like that. Clearly, she had been meant to enter it.
That's what she tried to convince herself of, anyway.
And then, after all that-
She had passed out. Her body probably hadn't been able to handle the sudden movement from one world to the next, especially it being the first time she had done it this particular way. But still. It hadn't been in her best intention to arrive in unfamiliar territory unconscious and completely helpless.
When Kairi finally come to, she was lying on the side of a street in a puddle of water. It was well into the evening, the night sky filled with silver rain clouds that half-hid the moon and the stars. Damp, chilled through, and without a clue as to where she was... this wasn't beginning pleasantly at all. She brushed her hair away from her face, and blearily looked around. Where was that stupid key?
Her hand knocked against something smooth and cold, and she picked up the key...wand...thing with disbelief. Had that been there before?
How weird. Actually, this entire experience was weird and she expected that it would only get stranger as it progressed. She stood up on unsteady legs, eyeing her surroundings. This place looked familiar yet at the same time, not.
Her mind took a few more moments to process what she seeing.
It was Traverse Town, she realized but it had changed. A lot. There were many more buildings now, most of them of a design very unfamiliar to her. These structures were taller and somehow harsher in appearance than the cozy shops and houses she had once known, with bright neon signs and lights flashing on them. In five years, she knew she should have expected some change but never would she have imagined anything like this!
Maybe if she found someplace more recognizable, she'd feel better about all this. But then what? Too late, she realized that she hadn't prepared herself at all for a sudden trip to other worlds: she had no food, no munny, and no plans at all for shelter or where to being her search. She was beginning to feel extremely foolish.
Well, she had met some people her last time here. Even if Leon, Aerith, Yuffie, Cid had already left for Hollow Bastion, there were those relatives of Donald's living down at the item shop. Maybe she could ask them for help. Now, it would seem, her biggest problem was getting to that help. Traverse Town had been huge the last time she had seen it, and had probably only grown larger in her absence. There were maps at the District gates, but...
She groaned; she had barely begun her quest before messing it up. There was little chance of her having the same kind of luck that Sora had had his first time in Traverse Town. Leon and all the rest of them had been there waiting to find and aid Sora. As for herself...
She was just going to have to stick this one out on her own.
~I'll just pick a direction and hope I get lucky.
Not exactly the best formula for finding her destination, but it was a start.
She walked along the main streets, passing under the searchlight beams of the streetlights. It was quiet that night; Kairi didn't meet anyone as she walked but at times she got the uneasy feeling that she had seen something, or several things, moving in the shadows. Were they Heartless? She quickened her pace and speculated as to the extent she could possibly use her key as weapon.
Stone stairs led up at the corner of a street. She took them and was relieved to see things gradually become more familiar. There was the row of little shops that Aerith had taken her to. Besides that was the café that had been run by a young cat-girl and her boyfriend. And there... she paused, staring at it for a minute to make sure of the place. It was the abandoned house that Cid, Yuffie, Leon and Aerith had claimed for themselves as a home while exiled from Hollow Bastion. She fondly remembered the time she had spent with them, even if it hadn't been all that long.
Then she wondered why she was getting so excited about this. Those old friends no longer lived here and she could only guess at its inhabitants now.
Nostalgia finally got to her though, and she couldn't resist peeking in through a curtained window to see how things looked inside the old building now. She stepped on top of an upturned crate and looked through the smoky glass. Never would she have guessed the surprise waiting for her inside.
A light glowed from within. Ah, so someone *was* staying here. She turned her head slightly to see better, and then-
Ye gods, was that Riku?!?!
She fell over right then and there, causing a large crash as she knocked a stack of cracked flowerpots off the window ceil. Lights switched on in the front hall and the door flew open, letting out of flood of bright yellow. Kairi blinked for a moment, dark spots dancing before her eyes.
"Umm...sorry about the damage." She said weakly, standing up.
A young man with silvery-blue hair and a blindfold over his eyes opened his mouth in surprise.
"Good Lord..." He breathed.
"Ha! What did I tell you?" His companion stated in triumph. This other one had pale sort of blonde hair to his shoulders and was wearing a smug smile. Kairi didn't really pay much attention to him though. Even with the cloth covering his eyes, there was no mistaking who "Blind" really was.
Riku closed his mouth very slowly before allowing it to twitch into a shadow of his old smirk.
"What took you so long, Kairi?"
Through a daze, Kairi found herself saying, "Huh? Were you expecting me?"
Riku ran a hand through his hair, the smirk falling into a sheepish smile. "It's a bit of a long story."
A very long story, from the looks of it.
"Aren't you going to invite her in, Riku?"
Unknown asked this easily, leaning against the doorframe. Riku aimed a scowl at him, but he had already ducked inside. Kairi watched Unknown curiously, and then looked back at Riku.
"Um, sure. I'd love to come in."
###
"Sora's not here, is he?"
Riku shook his head.
"I haven't seen him since we closed the doors of Kingdom Hearts, five years ago."
"I see."
Kairi rested her chin in hands. "I didn't think so, but I couldn't have helped but hope just a bit."
She looked across the room, studying her old friend. Riku had changed so much since she had last seen him. He appeared older, and much more mature; the years certainly had done a lot to him. Why was he wearing that blindfold?
"I'm so glad you're all right Riku. How did you escape Kingdom Hearts? What have you been doing all this time?"
Riku hesitated and Kairi wondered if she had somehow made a mistake by asking. Surely it would painful for him to dredge up those old memories.
"After the doors had been sealed, I was sure that I would never see the light again. I had felt that somehow as the doors had been sealed, my fate had been sealed as well."
He took a deep, ragged breath before continuing. "Thank the Gods that I had been wrong."
"I don't know if you had been aware of this, but it was light from Kingdom Hearts itself that had defeated Ansem in that final battle between him and Sora, Donald, and Goofy. But the light had done more than that; it had given me a chance to regain my physical body, and escape the darkness."
"From there, I'm not really quite clear on what happened. I had been in Kingdom Hearts for a time when I caught sight of a glimmer in the darkness. It must have been some way out of that world because the next thing I knew, I was in Traverse Town. I believe that Donald's and Goofy's king must have escaped too; he disappeared soon after aiding us close the doors."
"I see." Kairi tilted her head to one side, mulling over all that she had just heard. "But why Traverse Town? I thought that after the worlds were restored, their inhabitants would be drawn back from where they had come. So according to that theory, you should have been taken back to the Destiny Islands, not here."
"Several things affected this, I think. First of all, I had been released after the walls had been restored. Second, Traverse Town isn't exactly what I'd call a 'normal' world. It works like a magnet, drawing towards it the wandering souls of the universe, and if you look beyond its walls you'll find nothing out there, nothing at all."
"Nothing? How can there just be nothing? There has to be more to this world than simply one city, no matter how large."
"There are a lot of strange things about this place and I can't claim to completely understand it. Nearly all its people, probably all its people, come from other worlds. I believe that they all have had the choice of whether or not to stay here at some point or other, and I have a feeling that this has been going on since long before the Heartless had begun to take the worlds' hearts. After the worlds had been restored, many people decided to remain; they've expanded the city, and they would account for all the renovations you probably saw on your way here."
"Yes, I was wondering about that. Everything had changed so much."
She sighed.
"So I guess that thing about the walls is still true, isn't it? Gummi ships are completely useless, or you would have come back, wouldn't you?"
"Of course I would have! There hasn't been a moment in which I haven't dreamed of finding you and Sora and going back home!"
He spoke so vehemently Kairi wondered how his life had been all this time.
"What have you been up to?" She inquired at length. "I can't imagine you just sitting here and doing nothing for so long."
Riku shrugged "Mostly research: on the Heartless, the worlds, the keyblades and keyholes. I wanted to know more about these, so that if ever we met our enemies again, we'd be ready to face them. I've also been trying to find out if there are any other ways to travel the worlds now that Gummi ships aren't an option."
"Any luck?"
"Sorry." He looked up and seemed to stare very intently at the key she had resting in her lap. "But that brings up some questions I've been meaning to ask you: how did you get here, Kairi? How did you come by that key?"
"Huh? Oh..."
Kairi began by explaining about the meteor, then about the key suddenly appearing in her hand, and the emergence of a door in the air.
"Why?" She asked after she had finished. "Do you know something about all this? Or something about this key?"
"Kairi, I..." Riku stopped, and then decided to continue on a different string. "...I think there's something you should know about that key. That thing isn't simply a key- that's a piece of your heart."
"What?!? How would you know?"
A piece of her heart? Was that even possible?
"How could you know if this is a piece of my heart?" She repeated, incredulity written on her features. "Unless you can see something that I can't."
"And-" She absolutely refused to put this off any longer. "Why are you wearing that blindfold Riku? What is going on? I know you're hiding something from me."
At these questions, Riku began to appear extremely uneasy and not at all willing to answer. A voice above Kairi spoke.
"I'd tell her if I were you, Riku. The sooner she knows, the better."
"You stay out of this!"
Kairi whipped her head around to look up in surprise. She had forgotten that there had even been another person in the room.
"I'm sorry; I don't think I ever found out who you were."
"He says his name is Sei." Riku said tensely. "We just met earlier this evening. I had mistaken him for Sora, because of the keyblades that he carried-"
"Keyblades?!" Kairi's expression became shocked as she stared at Sei. "But there are only two keyblades, the King's and Sora's, and I know Sora would never give his up. Not willingly."
The implications of this sunk in.
"If you have done anything to Sora... I'll...I don't know what I'll do, but I swear you'll be sorry-"
"Kairi, calm down! He hasn't done anything to Sora. At least-" At this, Riku's look became a terrible dark one. "That's what he claims. In any case, he says that he can help us find Sora."
"For his sake, I should hope so." She muttered.
Kairi sunk deeper into the sofa and closed her eyes. She felt completely drained. So much was happening...and so quickly...
~Sora...where are you?
Why did things have to be so complicated?
"You look tired, Kairi. There's a room down the hall that you could use if you want."
Kairi opened one eye to give Riku a scathing glance.
"If you think that you're slithering out of this one that easily, you have another thing coming."
Damn.
Ignoring Sei's silent laughter beside him, Riku decided to finally accept the inevitable. He carefully undid the tie at the back of his head, and slid away the cloth. Kairi looked at him for a moment, feeling half-asleep and not really attending to present matters, before her eyes shot open.
"Oh, Riku..."
Riku no longer had the beautiful, icy blue eyes she once remembered. In their place were orbs of glowing liquid amber, void of their pupils.
"...I am so sorry..."
Riku had the eyes of a Heartless.
###
A/N:
I have yet to see anyone explain why "Blind" of the KH Secret Trailer is wearing a blindfold, except as maybe a peculiar fashion statement or something, and have taken it upon myself to do so with this resulting. I hope you can now connect some importance to the opening paragraph of this fanfic. ;P
Thanks to everyone who reviewed the first chapter of "Into the Light". I like knowing that my work is being read and enjoyed, and would like to know if there is anything that I can do to improve my writing. As for that bit of Chrono Cross, I've always been under the opinion that if CC characters had been included in Kingdom Hearts, it would have been right there on the Destiny Islands with Tidus, Wakka, and Selphie.
I'm trying my best to tie this in as closely as I can to the KH Secret trailer. Scattered sparingly so far are at least three quotes taken directly from the trailer and of course two scenes. I'll see how many more quotes I can get into the story before its finish.
I'll get the next chapter of this up as soon as I can. In the meantime, please continue to send me feedback on what you think!